The Giver Lesson Plan

Euphemisms

Kind of Activity:

Individual Writing

Objective:

To understand the use of euphemisms in The Giver

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6-8.4

Structure:

Assign students' this passage from George Orwell's 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, available here:

"...political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no...